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Blink-182's Tom DeLonge tries to sell Vampire Weekend a social network

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11–20 of 39 posts

Re: Blink-182's Tom DeLonge tries to sell Vampire Weekend a social network

#11

I really like that he termed a website an "operating system." It's funny to see what kind of weird stuff comes out of the mind of rock stars only surrounded with yes men.

People refer to Facebook as an "operating system": http://www.redherring.com/Home/23046 or http://www.google.com/search?q=facebook+operating+system

Maybe my experience has been skewed, but every person I know that has referred to an entity as a web operating system has been full of shit.

Re: Blink-182's Tom DeLonge tries to sell Vampire Weekend a social network

#13
post #5

The way I see it, this is just an entrepreneur being very passionate about his product, and some too-cool-for-school kids make jokes about it. I submitted the (full) source article to HN a couple of hours ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1034444

I didn't catch the jokes -- it all seemed very plausible to me.

Re: Blink-182's Tom DeLonge tries to sell Vampire Weekend a social network

#14

I really like that he termed a website an "operating system." It's funny to see what kind of weird stuff comes out of the mind of rock stars only surrounded with yes men.

Indeed. The average person's idea of an "operating system" is what they see on the screen and interact with. It's more of a portal.

Whereas us computer sciency people know that's only the icing on the cake of an "operating system".

Re: Blink-182's Tom DeLonge tries to sell Vampire Weekend a social network

#15

I really like that he termed a website an "operating system." It's funny to see what kind of weird stuff comes out of the mind of rock stars only surrounded with yes men.

I could see how he could come up with that if he was thinking about it as a system that provides services for a band's operations.

Re: Blink-182's Tom DeLonge tries to sell Vampire Weekend a social network

#16
post #4

This is the network he was plugging: http://modlife.com/ There are a lot of other sites in this space and I can't say this one stands out as being particularly impressive.

Wow - that looks like Myspace 1.5. And not in a good way - this site is confusing.

Re: Blink-182's Tom DeLonge tries to sell Vampire Weekend a social network

#17
post #5

The way I see it, this is just an entrepreneur being very passionate about his product, and some too-cool-for-school kids make jokes about it. I submitted the (full) source article to HN a couple of hours ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1034444

Perhaps, but the social dynamics are made extra interesting by the fact that the "passionate entrepreneur" is the too-cool-for-school kid of a dozen years ago, and he's having trouble coping with it.

I'm not sure whether it's pathos or schadenfreude, but there's something fascinating about the weird approval-seeking behaviour exhibited by this former cool kid towards the new cool kids, especially given the enormous stylistic gulf between the two bands.

Re: Blink-182's Tom DeLonge tries to sell Vampire Weekend a social network

#18
post #13
post #5

The way I see it, this is just an entrepreneur being very passionate about his product, and some too-cool-for-school kids make jokes about it. I submitted the (full) source article to HN a couple of hours ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1034444

I didn't catch the jokes -- it all seemed very plausible to me.

I assume the joke was in the delivery. But I'd agree that the concept described in the retelling seems very reasonable. Delonge seems to be a non-technical entrepreneur attempting to pitch/address a pain point that he perceives in his industry - that is how to effectively engage an audience/following and interact in such a way as to extract full value (through future evangelism by the fans and future dollars).

Re: Blink-182's Tom DeLonge tries to sell Vampire Weekend a social network

#19
post #4

This is the network he was plugging: http://modlife.com/ There are a lot of other sites in this space and I can't say this one stands out as being particularly impressive.

Wow - that looks like Myspace 1.5. And not in a good way - this site is confusing.

Looks about like what you'd imagine for something probably mostly guided by non technology types, they are trying to be a content site similar to myspace.

I think for a site like this your much more likely to be successful if you can be the only network people use. Most users of a site like this would probably still have say a facebook. A myspace with good tech would have achieved this.

Re: Blink-182's Tom DeLonge tries to sell Vampire Weekend a social network

#20
post #4

This is the network he was plugging: http://modlife.com/ There are a lot of other sites in this space and I can't say this one stands out as being particularly impressive.

It certainly is "feature-packed".

Good luck to them, very tough space.

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